delivering over 8 Linpack petaflops with less than 10 megawatts of power

The exceptional energy efficiency of K is provided courtesy of the 8-core SPARC64 VIIIfx processor, a 58 watt chip that delivers 128 peak gigaflops. That’s nearly up to the standards of an HPC-style GPU, a processor which basically does nothing but FLOPS

NCSA’s Power7-based Blue Waters system is slated to hit the 10-petaflop mark when it’s installed later 2011 and Lawrence Livermore National Lab’s Blue Gene/Q Sequoia supercomputer is aiming for 20 petaflops when fully deployed in 2012. Also on the drawing board is the GPU-accelerated OLCF-3 system at Oak Ridge National Lab, which is expected to deliver between 10 to 20 petaflops. And China certainly has plans to build systems in the 10-petaflop range and beyond.